This monograph presents fifty works from the brief career of the Italian artist Francesco Lo Savio, who inspired American minimalism: his early works, some Spazio-Luce, Filtri, Metalli and Articolazione Totale, his architectural models conceived at the end of his life, as well as many unpublished documents.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Lo Savio, Centro per l'Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato, 22/02/04 - 31/05/04 ; Le Consortium, Dijon, 09/07/04 - 26/09/04.
Francesco Lo Savio (1935-1963) is particularly highly regarded by artists and a small devoted following, but continues to be little known outside his native Italy. As a trained architect he worked on blueprint, as well as on canvas, and on sheet metal. But the materiality of the work is always pared down, the surfaces melding into surrounding space. In structure the work anticipates American Minimalism but in its effect canvas and steel are translated into direct experience of space and light it prefigures the achievements of conceptual art.
